omgram: Aviva Chomsky, How the Green New Deal Is Changing America
Posted by Aviva Chomsky at 7:23am, August 6, 2019.
Honestly, is the phrase “climate-change denier” appropriate for Jair Bolsonaro, the Trumpian president of Brazil, who has denied that climate change is anything to worry about. But far more important, in office, he has opened the planet’s “lungs,” the Amazon rainforest, to exploitation and devastation. He’s a man who is essentially giving lung cancer to his country’s former carbon sink. Under his reign, according to the New York Times, the Brazilian Amazon has already lost 1,330 square miles of forest cover. That, of course, is a planetary, not just a Brazilian, catastrophe and the man working so hard to make it so will, as a result, be partially responsible for the future warming of the planet. In other words, he’s not a climate denier but an aider and abettor of the phenomenon.
That, at least, is the phrase I’ve started using for these guys. Maybe “climate change criminals” would be more appropriate. Yes, Donald Trump has “denied” climate change, calling it a “Chinese hoax,” tweet-mocking global warming whenever it snows, and so on. Far more important, though, he and his cronies are working hard in just about every way imaginable to increase U.S. carbon emissions (which are, as of 2018, again on the rise). So TomDispatch regular Aviva Chomsky arrives just in the nick of time with a vivid description of how so many of the rest of us, particularly labor and environmental groups, are trying to get ourselves together on a planet where a number of our leaders are increasingly intent on taking us all down. Tom
Jobs, the Environment, and a Planet in Crisis
Unions vs. Environmentalists or Unions and Environmentalists?
By Aviva Chomsky
When it comes to heat, extreme weather, wildfires, and melting glaciers, the planet is now in what the media increasingly refers to as “record” territory, as climate change’s momentum outpaces predictions. In such a situation, in a country whose president and administration seem hell-bent on doing everything they conceivably can to make matters worse, the Green New Deal (GND) seems to offer at least a modest opening to a path forward.
You know, the resolution introduced this February in the House of Representatives by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Edward Markey (D-MA). Unsurprisingly, the proposal has been roundly attacked by the right. But it’s stirred up some controversy on the left as well. You might imagine that labor unions and environmental organizations would be wholeheartedly for a massive federal investment in good jobs and a just transition away from fossil fuels. But does organized labor actually support or oppose the Green New Deal? What about environmental organizations? If you’re not even sure how to answer such questions, you’re not alone.
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